The Ruler archetype seeks to stop chaos by taking control. It is one of the most recognizable archetypes, but also one of the most easily corruptible.
100 Quotes for Rulers
We’ve collected the best quotes about rulers for you to read through.
This selection of quotations are based solely on my personal taste and are in no particular order. You are welcome to browse the entire collection and look for your own favourite quotes.
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Checkout this list of ruler quotes:
1. Matshona Dhliwayo
Don’t be afraid of being alone; a lion does not rule the jungle with sheep at its side.
2. Matshona Dhliwayo
You can lead people where they have never gone if you get there in your mind first.
3. Matshona Dhliwayo
One who rules his mind rules his soul
4. Matshona Dhliwayo
The wiser a king is,
the greater his nation will become.
The more enlightened a nation is,
the more esteemed it is.
5. Matshona Dhliwayo
When a great man dies, nations mourn. When an ordinary man dies, only those who loved him mourn. When an evil man dies, even the wicked do not mourn. Pretentious eulogies harm those who hear them.
6. Dr.P.S. Jagadeesh Kumar
A ruler will try to attach people with him but a leader will try to attach him with people
7. Robert A Heinlein
The most preposterous notion that Homo sapiens has ever dreamed up is that the Lord God of Creation, Shaper and Ruler of all the Universes, wants the saccharine adoration of His creatures, can be swayed by their prayers, and becomes petulant if He does not receive this flattery. Yet this absurd fantasy, without a shred of evidence to bolster it, pays all the expenses of the oldest, largest, and least productive industry in all history.
8. Han Fei
If a ruler can get rid of private crookedness and promote the public law, his people will become secure, and his state will become well ordered.
9. Han Fei
If ministers forget their ruler and establish relationships with foreign powers in order to advance the interests of their confederates, there will be scant reason for subordinates to obey their superiors.
10. Aristotle
A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious. On the other hand, they do less easily move against him, believing that he has the gods on his side.
11. Aristotle
He who is to be a good ruler must have first been ruled.
12. Mahatma Gandhi
For me every ruler is alien that defies public opinion.
13. Sun Tzu
The enlightened ruler is heedful, and the good general full of caution.
14. Sun Tzu
It is only the enlightened ruler and the wise general who will use the highest intelligence of the army for the purposes of spying, and thereby they achieve great results.
15. Sun Tzu
If fighting is sure to result in victory, than you must fight, even though the ruler forbid it; if fighting will not result in victory, then you must not fight even at the ruler’s bidding.
16. Walt Whitman
Oh while I live, to be the ruler of life, not a slave, to meet life as a powerful conqueror, and nothing exterior to me will ever take command of me.
17. Niccolo Machiavelli
The new ruler must determine all the injuries that he will need to inflict. He must inflict them once and for all.
18. Niccolo Machiavelli
The first method for estimating the intelligence of a ruler is to look at the men he has around him.
19. Niccolo Machiavelli
A wise ruler ought never to keep faith when by doing so it would be against his interests.
20. Blaise Pascal
Can anything be stupider than that a man has the right to kill me because he lives on the other side of a river and his ruler has a quarrel with mine, though I have not quarrelled with him?
21. Denis Waitley
You must welcome change as the rule but not as your ruler.
22. Catherine the Great
In politics a capable ruler must be guided by circumstances, conjectures and conjunctions.
23. George W Bush
The once all-powerful ruler of Iraq was found in a hole, and now sits in a prison cell.
24. Han Fei
The ruler who possesses methods of government does not follow the good that happens by chance but practices according to necessary principles. Law, methods, and power must be employed for government: these constitute its ‘necessary principles.’
25. Han Fei
A ruler makes use of the majority and neglects the minority, and so he does not devote himself to virtue but to law.
26. Han Fei
A filial son to his father can be a traitorous subject to his ruler.
27. Han Fei
The intelligent ruler makes the law select men and makes no arbitrary appointment himself; he makes the law measure merits and makes no arbitrary judgment himself.
28. Han Fei
A wise man, when he writes a book, sets forth his arguments fully and clearly; an enlightened ruler, when he makes his laws, sees to it that every contingency is provided for in detail.
29. Han Fei
The object of rewards is to encourage; that of punishments, to prevent. If rewards are high, then what the ruler wants will be quickly effected; if punishments are heavy, what he does not want will be swiftly prevented.
30. Han Fei
A wise ruler, when he makes his laws, is bound to find himself in conflict with the world.
31. Han Fei
The Way of an enlightened ruler is to make it so that no minister may make a proposal and then fail to match it with actions and results.
32. James K Polk
It becomes us in humility to make our devout acknowledgments to the Supreme Ruler of the Universe for the inestimable civil and religious blessings with which we are favored.
33. Muammar Al-Gaddafi
For 40 years, I have not been the ruler – the authority has been with the people. They take nothing from me or add anything to me.
34. Johnny Depp
I want to be Ruler of the Exumas. I like the sound of it. I want to become Kurtz and live like in ‘Lord of the Flies.’
35. Robert Collier
Your real self – the ‘I am I’ – is master of this land, the ruler of this empire. You rightfully have power and dominion over it, all its inhabitants, and all contained in its realm.
36. Thomas a Kempis
The only safe ruler is he who has learned to obey willingly.
37. Jonathan Sacks
Freedom is not won by merely overthrowing a tyrannical ruler or an oppressive regime. That is usually only the prelude to a new tyranny, a new oppression.
38. George R.R. Martin
Of course it’s not enough to be a good man to be an effective ruler and it never has been.
39. Mustafa Kemal Ataturk
I have no religion, and at times I wish all religions at the bottom of the sea. He is a weak ruler who needs religion to uphold his government; it is as if he would catch his people in a trap.
40. E.T. Bell
Fashion as King is sometimes a very stupid ruler.
41. Lupita Nyong’o
Whoopi Goldberg looked like me, she had hair like mine, she was dark like me. I’d been starved for images of myself. I’d grown up watching a lot of American TV. There was very little Kenyan material, because we had an autocratic ruler who stifled our creative expression.
42. John C Calhoun
I hold it to be the most monstrous proposition ever uttered within the Senate that conquering a country like Mexico, the President can constitute himself a despotic ruler without the slightest limitation on his power. If all this be true, war is indeed dangerous!
43. Paul Johnson
Margaret Thatcher had more impact on the world than any woman ruler since Catherine the Great of Russia. Not only did she turn around – decisively – the British economy in the 1980s, she also saw her methods copied in more than 50 countries.
44. Yitzhak Rabin
No Arab ruler will consider the peace process seriously so long as he is able to toy with the idea of achieving more by the way of violence.
45. Stacy Schiff
What we know about Cleopatra’s looks is based purely on her coin portraits. Engraving was imperfect, and that when you are a ruler and you ask for a coin to be engraved with your likeness on it, you are probably trying to project a certain air of authority.
46. Moon Jae-in
We must embrace the North Korean people as part of the Korean nation, and to do that, whether we like it or not, we must recognize Kim Jong-un as their ruler and as our dialogue partner.
47. Samuel Morse
The mere holding of slaves, therefore, is a condition having per se nothing of moral character in it, any more than the being a parent, or employer, or ruler.
48. Elias Canetti
The paranoiac is the exact image of the ruler. The only difference is their position in the world. One might even think the paranoiac the more impressive of the two because he is sufficient unto himself and cannot be shaken by failure.
49. Murray Rothbard
Lacking the direct test of success or failure, the voter tends to turn, not to those politicians whose measures have the best chance of success, but to those with the ability to ‘sell’ their propaganda. Without grasping logical chains of deduction, the average voter will never be able to discover the error that the ruler makes.
50. Tariq Ali
Indian classical music was born when time barely existed. It developed further within the structures of royal courts and a system of patronage where the ruler or the feudal master determined all.
51. Zakk Wylde
Around my house, I won’t even speak to my family unless they first address me by my official Berzerker name, Godred Crovan, Victor of Sky-Hill and Ruler of Man and the Isles. And now that I think of it, that’s probably why nobody speaks to me unless it’s time to feed the dogs or take out the garbage.
52. Charles Hodge
Romanists tell us that the Pope is the vicar of Christ; that he is his successor as the universal head and ruler of the Church on earth. If this is so, he must be a Christ.
53. Elizabeth I
I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too, and think foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any prince of Europe, should dare to invade the borders of my realm: to which rather than any dishonour shall grow by me, I myself will take up arms, I myself will be your general, judge, and rewarder of every one of your virtues in the field.
54. Benjamin Bannekar
I am of the African race, and in the colour which is natural to them of the deepest dye; and it is under a sense of the most profound gratitude to the Supreme Ruler of the Universe.
55. Jarvis Cocker
Being chronically shy I needed to create a persona for myself and be involved with a band where I could be ruler of my own kingdom. Then Pulp became hugely popular and I lost control of it, which is when it all went wrong.
56. James Meredith
My great-grandfather was the last ruler of the Choctaw Nation, and from birth, I was taught that my role was to restore the power and the glory to my bloodline.
57. Sheikh Hasina
I devoted myself to the task of welfare of my countrymen – not as a ruler but as a servant.
58. Friedensreich Hundertwasser
Just carrying a ruler with you in your pocket should be forbidden, at least on a moral basis. The ruler is the symbol of the new illiteracy. The ruler is the symptom of the new disease, disintegration of our civilisation.
59. Kathryn Harrison
It’s hard for me not to have a great deal of compassion for the last Romanov family because, really, I don’t know if a politically savvy ruler would have been able to make the situation turn out much differently.
60. Mohamed ElBaradei
Historically, Islam was hijacked about 20 or 30 years after the Prophet and interpreted in such a way that the ruler has absolute power and is accountable only to God. That, of course, was a very convenient interpretation for whoever was the ruler.
61. Roy Jones Jr
In my prime, I was the ruler. Simple as that. I understand there’s a lot of great fighters who’ve followed me already since I was the champ – and I hope there’s another who comes along does even better because want to see that – but I haven’t seen anyone do what I did yet.
62. Davey Havok
I’m an extremist, I have to deal with my own extreme personality, and I walk the fine line of wanting to die and wanting to be the ruler of it all.
63. Pope Shenouda III
Civil disobedience is not accepted by religion and the state does not accept it and there are many verses in the Holy Book that talk of following the ruler.
64. Thomas Becket
It is important that the Church of London, which has now lost its ruler, should receive for its new bishop a man whose personal merit, attainments in learning, and prudence in managing public business shall not be unworthy of the dignity of that see.
65. Paul Heyman
I truly am of the belief that I should be nominated and elected ‘Emperor of North America’ and given a shot at being ruler of the universe, and I haven’t had the chance to craft my campaigns for these offices yet because I’ve been very busy with Brock Lesnar.
66. Steven Gundry
As my mentor in Medical School, Dr William Strong taught me: Never wear a white coat; it separates you from a fellow human being. I never have from that day on. You are your patients guide, counselor, and defender, not their ruler and dictator.
67. Paul Feig
I was brought up in a very religious household and did a lot of praying throughout a big part of my life and always thought of God as being not only a powerful father figure and the ruler of all time and dimension but also as a friend with whom I could chat and ask questions to and get advice from.
68. Mehdi Hasan
I was 13 years old when I first heard of the Sultan of Brunei. The absolute ruler of a tiny, oil-rich kingdom in Southeast Asia, Hassanal Bolkiah was the subject of a much-discussed TV documentary by the British filmmaker Alan Whicker in 1992. As a young teenager, sitting in front of the television, I was in awe of this Muslim king.
69. Simon Sebag Montefiore
The unspoken contract between ruler and subject is that in return for safety, prosperity, and prestige, the Russians entrust power and cede democratic freedoms to their leaders.
70. Saul David
The first Romanov ruler was just 16 when he was crowned Tsar Michael I in Moscow in 1613, thus ending the ‘Time of Troubles’ sparked by Ivan the Terrible’s death.
71. David Novak
In historical messianism, the reign of the Messiah is brought about by a Jewish ruler powerful enough to gather the Jewish exiles back to the land of Israel, reestablish a Torah government there, and rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem.
72. Frederick I, Holy Roman Emperor
Since by the ordination of God I both am called and am Emperor of the Romans, in nothing but name shall I appear to be ruler if the control of the Roman city be wrested from my hands.
73. Meles Zenawi
I would love to be the African leader that steps down, that overthrows this idea of a Big Man ruler. I don’t want to stay in office forever.
74. Jack Schwartz
In the Middle Ages and beyond, the target was the Court Jew who had the ear of the ruler; during the Inquisition it was the Spanish Jews who thrived after their conversion to Christianity.
75. James Woolsey
Look, I don’t think President Obama would have bowed to the ruler of Saudi Arabia if he didn’t have oil to the degree that the Saudis do. I think they and other producing states, almost all of whom, except Norway and Canada, are dictatorships or autocratic systems, have thrown their weight around because of oil.
76. James Hawes
Prince Charles has doomed himself by so clearly wanting to be thought clever and cultured: the clever, cultured people don’t buy it, and the people don’t want a clever, cultured ruler.
77. George B McClellan
Conscious of my own weakness, I can only seek fervently the guidance of the Ruler of the Universe, and, relying on His all-powerful aid, do my best to restore Union and peace to a suffering people, and to establish and guard their liberties and rights.
78. Patricia Briggs
A stupid ruler is much more of a problem than an insane one
79. Criss Jami
Sometimes it takes a lowly, title-less man to humble the world. Kings, rulers, CEOs, judges, doctors, pastors, they are already expected to be greater and wiser.
80. Richelle E Goodrich
The sign of a good leader is easy to recognize, though it is hardly ever seen. For the greatest leaders are those who share as equals in the trials and struggles, the demands and expectations, the hills and trenches, the laws and punishments placed upon the backs of those governed. A great leader is motivated not by power but by compassion. Therefore he can do nothing but make himself a servant to those whom he rules. Such a leader is unequivocally respected, and loved for loving.
81. Toba Beta
An immovable object and an unstoppable force
don’t exist in universe which ruled by single ruler.
82. Joseph Rain
An all-powerful ruler of the Universe would not endorse a dormant mind.
83. George R.R. Martin
The Queen Who Never Was; what did Viserys ever have that she did not? A little sausage? Is that all it takes to be a king? Let Mushroom rule, then. My sausage is thrice the size of his.
84. Alwyn Hamilton
My son is an idealist. Idealists make great leaders, but they never make good rulers.
85. Shon Mehta
Don’t confuse actions of a ruler as the nature of his people.
86. E.R. Eddison
A great king should rather be a dog that killeth clean, than a cat that patteth and sporteth with his prey.
87. J Aaron Gruben
To be a good ruler one must be the best of servants.
88. Gene Luen Yang
There is no right or wrong apart from what you decide. Who you chose to defend deserves to be defended simply because you chose them. You are the Fire Lord. What you chose, by definition, is right
89. Thomas Jerome Baker
What is deemed as “his-story” is often determined by those who survived to write it. In other words, history is written by the victors…Now, with the help of the Roman historian Tacitus, I shall tell you Queen Boudicca’s story, her-story……
90. Jayne Castel
There is no friendship between kings.
91. Justin Buzzard
Jesus doesn’t come asking if He can hang out with us. He commands us to follow Him. He has total authority and will settle for nothing less; He won’t settle for being an accessory, an add- on, or a peaceful accompaniment to a nice life. No, He will rule and He will meddle.
92. Israelmore Ayivor
Whatever you begin will see the light of day provided you can dream big and be a ruler over your dreams with persistent actions
93. Tomichan Matheikal
Any fool with ambition and heartlessness can be a ruler.
94. Craig D Lounsborough
The wisdom to be on the throne of one’s life must surpass the wisdom of the one being ruled, otherwise I will squander the whole of my life in the most appalling ways. By virtue of that reality, I would be wise to get out of the chair and invite God to have a seat
95. Michel de Montaigne
This emperor was arbiter of the whole world at nineteen, and yet would have a man to be thirty before he could be fit to determine a dispute about a gutter
96. Krishna Udayasankar
What does it matter who is ruler of a realm that no longer exists?
97. Matshona Dhliwayo
One who rules the jungle is greater than one who rules the forest.
98. Matshona Dhliwayo
If your leaders want you to talk to them, consider them. If your leaders want you to debate them, regard them. If your leaders want you to oppose them, love them. If your leaders want you to police them, revere them.
99. Matshona Dhliwayo
Oppress several,
and you have several enemies.
Oppress many,
and you have many enemies.
Oppress numerous,
and you have numerous enemies.
Oppress countless,
and you have countless enemies.
100. Matshona Dhliwayo
If you tolerate cruel people,
you tolerate evil people.
If you persecute kind people,
you persecute righteous people
